


No Stark Was Ever A Zoologist

by starkknaked



Category: The Avengers (2012), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Humor, Mentions of Thor, Off-screen Character Death, just get the guy a puppy already
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-28
Updated: 2013-02-28
Packaged: 2017-12-03 21:22:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,312
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/702772
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starkknaked/pseuds/starkknaked
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pets are not allowed in the Tower. Pets are /not/ allowed in the Tower. Pets /are not allowed/ in the Tower. Exceptions have been made for one Steve Rogers; however. (But only because he asked nicely.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Stark Was Ever A Zoologist

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Maeday](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Maeday/gifts).



The latest version of the armour had been destroyed in an unsavoury encounter with alien slug ... slime? Spit? Tony preferred not to overthink it. Though he was considering a localised force-field for the suit. Bruce had isolated the compound for further study, but Tony reasoned a more general defence would be better than finding out mid-battle that all intergalactic gastropods secretions were not created equal.

He was fiddling with a new pair of gauntlets when he heard it—a faint noise coming from Dum-E’s general area that sounded in no way mechanical or like the breaking of various objects. Tony shut off the welding torch. The noise continued. It had the high, warbling pitch of something small, distressed, and distinctly organic.

Dammit! He'd already told Thor three times _this month_ that under no circumstances was he allowed to have pets in the tower. Pulling himself away from the table with an aggravated sigh, Tony went to investigate the sure-to-be-furry-and-four-legged abomination. How had it even gotten in? And this, right here, was reason number one he’d put his foot down about pets. They had an uncanny knack for being where you least expected them, and at the most inopportune times. Well, that, and Tony was not about to have his Italian leather furniture ripped to shreds by “Spot” or “Fluffy.”

The source of the noise looked neither very Spot, nor very Fluffy-like. Hiding in one of Tony’s cabinets—and playing a hostile game of keep-away with a curious Dum-E—was a disgruntled, grey cat. No, it looked more like a “Stormy,” Tony decided. The cat yowled and hissed as Dum-E poked the cabinet door open, and tried to “hug” its unfortunate victim. Tony snorted.

 

“Yeah, okay. C’mon.” He patted the bot’s arm affectionately. “Alright, cut it out. I’m pretty sure making a cat into a pancake voids the warranty.”

 

Dum-E’s servos made an inquisitive whirr, claw swivelling sideways to point in Tony’s general direction. The cat, seeing an opportunity—and not knowing Tony wasn’t exactly the welcoming type when it came to “all creatures great and small”—leapt out of the cabinet, and landed squarely on the man’s chest.

 

“FUCK!”

 

Another strike against cats, Tony thought. Most of them have claws. This was only slightly less traumatic than the time he’d tried expanding the arc reactor’s magnetic field. For purely scientific purposes, of course. Natasha had found him, dangling from a crossbeam and yelling at JARVIS about who was or was not appropriate to call in these kinds of situations. Becoming a kitty pincushion was at least an order of magnitude worse, and he had blacked out in Nat’s arms during the magnet fiasco.

Wincing and cursing, Tony grabbed the cat around the middle and wrestled it from his body. There was an indignant hiss and the sharp sound of ripping fabric. Twenty tiny hooks came away with a little skin, a bit of blood, and a strip of black bearing the letters “ACK SAB.” Tony glared. The cat sniffed.

He was seriously considering letting Dum-E chase it around—just for a minute or two, he wouldn’t let it get squashed—when Steve’s voice interrupted the one-sided staring contest between man and diminutive beast.

 

“Tony, um, can I look around in here? I—” The words died in Steve’s throat. Tony had turned to face him, holding the cat out like a soon-to-be sacrifice.

 

“Oh!” Steve’s expression brightened.

 

“Steve.” Tony spat out the man’s name like particularly nasty invective.

 

Captain America may not have been capable of looking guilty—Tony had run semi-scientific tests—but Steve Rogers could’ve passed for a five-year-old who’d been caught elbow deep in the proverbial cookie jar.

 

“Yes?” Steve’s eyes shone with false innocence.

 

“Is this your cat?” Tony frowned, over-enunciating each word as if speaking to a particularly difficult child.

 

“Ye–es?” The other man chuckled nervously, but held out his hands for the cat, who was pawing at the arc reactor curiously.

 

Tony offered it up like he was passing off a baby with a dirty diaper. For the record, Tony was about as fond of pets as he was of smelly kids. The cat curled into the cradle of Steve’s arms, purring loudly.

 

Steve looked between Tony and the sliver of fabric he was detaching from a furry, flexing paw, and gave the other man an apologetic smile. “Tony—”

 

“We talked about this, Steve! There was a _meeting_!” The house meeting concerning pets had lasted an hour, and ended with Tony in danger of being flattened by a petulant god. “And don’t tell me you weren’t paying attention, because you always do, even if it’s just Clint bitching about what gets TiVo-ed.” Tony pinned him with a skeptical look.

 

“I know.” The cat shifted against Steve’s chest and he smiled at it fondly. “But at the shelter they were running out of room, and Jess was saying how she hoped someone would take her, or they might have to put her down, and well ... I couldn’t just leave her there, Tony!”

 

The other man rubbed absently at the patch of newly exposed skin below his collarbone. His eyebrows had migrated considerably closer to his hairline. “Her?”

 

Steve looked sheepish, and a faint blush was forming on the tips of his ears. “Yes. Tony, meet Peggy.” The cat purred.

 

“Peggy?”

 

Steve nodded, his expression one of earnest hopefulness, and Tony bit the side of his lip. “That’s low, Steve.”

 

The man shifted his weight, fidgeting in a way Tony had only seen him do out of uniform. “Peggy” butted her head into his arm. “Do you remember the phone call I got last week?” he said finally.

 

Tony nodded. Yeah, he remembered. Steve had left his cell in the workshop when he’d gone out for a run—he was going to weld it to the guy’s hand one day, really—forcing Tony to pick it up after strains of It Had to Be You showed no sign of stopping. It’d been a SHIELD agent. A kid, by the sound of it, with a high, unsteady voice that asked for “Steven Rogers,” and pronounced all the syllables. When Tony said Steve wouldn’t be back for few hours, the kid had hung up.

 

“Yeah, so?” Tony pulled at the frayed, black threads of what had been a perfectly good T-shirt.

 

“Fury wanted to see me.” Steve’s jaw tightened, “He wanted to tell me Agent Carter passed away that day.”

 

“Oh.” Tony’s voice went suddenly soft. Steve made a noncommittal sound in the back of his throat.

 

“I’m sor—”

 

“It’s okay. Really.” Steve cut the other man off with a small smile. Tony could empathise. After his parents had died, platitudes had gotten really old, really quickly.

 

He squinted at “Peggy,” who stared back, yellow eyes half-lidded in either disinterest or disdain. He could never really tell with cats. Tony sighed. “You realise this is leverage for Thor to use against me, right?”

 

The wide smile from earlier had reappeared on Steve’s face. “I promise I won’t let him put you through a wall if he gets upset about it.”

 

That was unlikely. But Tony did see himself having a persistent, sad-eyed god for a shadow in the near future. He rolled his eyes. “Okay, take Fluffy and get her out of here, please. Dum-E’s already in charge of pointless destruction and attention mongering, and he doesn’t need any help.”

 

Steve grinned, watching as the other man returned to his worktable. “Thanks, Tony. This really means a lot to me.”

 

“Hn.” Tony had already switched on the welding torch, and was calling for Dum-E to ‘come and make himself useful for once.’ The bot paused to “wave” goodbye to Steve as he left the workshop, Peggy in tow.

 

Tony winced as he carefully wired a small section of the gauntlet. He was going to have to get Thor a puppy.

**Author's Note:**

> For this prompt from the fic workshop I'm currently in:
> 
> Here is a list of events: a strange cat appears in the kitchen one morning, a phone call delivering tragic news, your character’s favorite item of clothing gets ruined, they are gifted something from a stranger. Organize those events (they definitely do not need to be in this order, that is the point of the exercise) to make sense in whatever scene they inspire you to write.
> 
> Posting here because misery, company; something, something, something else.


End file.
